Just when we thought it was safe to begin relentlessly pounding Software …

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A new build of Apple's forthcoming Mac OS X 10.5.6 update for Leopard has hit the streets. Detailed in a leaked copy of release notes are what amount to 103 fixes across a wide gamut of components.

HMBT is once again bustin' NDAs, taking names, and ensuring it gets scratched off Apple's Christmas card list by posting (again) what appears to be the full copy of changes and bug fixes in this latest build, version 9G52. The first developer test build of 10.5.6 appeared at the end of October and contained over 50 fixes. A subsequent build early in November brought that number to 90, and a third build a week later brought 97 fixes and "no known issues" remaining. Due to 10.5.5's release in September a week after a developer build was also found to have no issues, some speculated that 10.5.6 could ship around mid-November. Obviously, we are still 10.5.6-free, as Apple apparently decided it still had a little more work to do.

In the spotlight (ha!) of 9G52 are MobileMe syncing and Mail. Apple is asking developers to bang on MobileMe's automatic syncing feature with portable Macs and on networks with medium-to-high latency or constrained bandwidth. Apple wants to hear from developers who work behind firewalls and corporate proxies, and it's also interested in hearing if changes sync between Macs and the MobileMe website within "a reasonable amount of time" when automatic syncing is turned on. Until Exchange support arrives in Snow Leopard, though, "automatic" syncing means "15 minutes at the most" with MobileMe, so we're curious as to what Apple's definition of "reasonable" is.

Additionally, Apple wants to hear from Mail users who send messages entirely in non-Latin languages like Hangul, Kotoeri, and Traditional Chinese. Cyrillic, Hebrew, and Arabic are "good sets of writing systems to pound on" as well.

Sounds like we'll need to wait a bit longer for 10.5.6 to arrive, but any improvements to MobileMe syncing reliability and speed are definitely worth it. We'll keep you posted.